As one half of the very popular Flight of the Conchords duo, Bret McKenzie has certainly made a name for himself in the comedy world. While he has recently started to branch out acting-wise with more prominent roles in the upcoming Austenland and The Hobbit trilogy, McKenzie also drew notice for penning some excellent original songs in 2011’s The Muppets. The multi-talented New Zealand native ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Man or Muppet,” and he’s returning to pen even more songs for the sequel Muppets Most Wanted.

Steve recently sat down with McKenzie to discuss his work in Austenland, but during the course of the interview McKenzie revealed that he’s currently writing a film of his own that he describes as “a fairy tale comedy musical.” The Muppets co-writer and director James Bobin is helping McKenzie develop the property, which will involve singing dragons and monsters and draws on elements from both The Muppets and The Princess Bride. Hit the jump for more on this rather promising project.

While speaking with Steve, McKenzie said that he’s currently in the process of developing a screenplay of his own with the help of Bobin:

“I’m in the middle of a script for a kind of—it hasn’t got a name yet but it’s a fairy tale comedy musical, sort of akin to Labyrinth or something like that. I’m developing and that script’s halfway through. James Bobin’s helping me. I’m the official writer but we’re developing it. I want to make a comedy musical with singing dragons and monsters and stuff. [It’s] live-action, so it would be a mixture of The Muppets and The Princess Bride.”

McKenzie went on to caution that it’s still very early days on the project so there’s no telling how much it will change when/if it comes to fruition, but he seems highly enthused by the idea:

“No title yet but it’s definitely my favorite thing I’m working on at the moment. It’s early, though, it’s early. It’s still developing.”

Yeah, let’s talk about that for a bit. It’s so good. Such a weird film though, right? I’m working on a musical fairy tale at the moment and I’ve been watching films like that and the story in that is insane. She hates her baby brother. She gets angry with this baby and it gets taken away. It’s such a strange premise for her to leave, so then she’s chasing this baby that she didn’t like and wants to get it back and there’s this weird love interest between Bowie and her, this sort of unspoken… They’re at the ball dancing as though there’s a romance.

No, he says he wants her to be his wife.

It’s so weird, right? I don’t know if you could do that now. Anyway, I love that song, that’s great and then I also like all the ‘80s ballads. I’m just trying to think of an example.

Top Gun?

Top Gun, yeah, but what was the song in that?

“Take My Breath Away.”

Yeah, I feel like we’ve lost the use of a song the way they were used in the ‘80s. I guess the Bond film was the most recent successful really good song.

Skyfall?

Skyfall, yeah.

Is the musical fairy tale you’re working on Muppets Most Wanted?

No, not Muppety but with creatures.

What is the musical fairy tale you’re doing?

It doesn’t have a name yet. It’s still in script form.

What kind of music will it be?

I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided yet.

Let’s talk about Labyrinth a little more.

Yeah, I love it, why not?

I just think it’s the most supremely creative movie.

I know David Bowie’s really proud of what he did for the music in that. Looking back at it, I do agree that he did manage to get a pretty fresh sound on that.

The music is great, but even on the Henson side, the details in the background, the individual characters populating the labyrinth…

That’s the kind of tone I want to get for this film. We have creatures but who are dropped down into interpersonal relationship issues.

Bret McKenzie Tells Us More About His Labyrinth-Style MusicalBy Scott Pierceon March 10th, 2014 at 7:26pm

What do you do after you've won an Oscar for your music in a Muppets movie? Make music for the sequel, obviously. But with the March 21 release date for Muppets Most Wanted fast approaching, we want to know more about multi-talented actor, writer, and composer Bret McKenzie's project he teased last year: A fair tale musical in the vein of Jim Henson's 1986 classic, Labyrinth. I spoke to the Flight of the Concords mastermind yesterday about how the project is coming along, what to expect, and whether he can just take my money Veronica Mars-style. Here's the stuff that got me more excited than I already was:

The script he worked with James Bobin on is done. McKenzie really loves puppets:

We've finished the script. I started writing songs for a musical fairy tale. I grew up loving The Dark Crystal. That was one of the few VHSs we had. We had two - that and National Velvet. We watched The Dark Crystal a lot in my house. There's something about puppets, Muppets in particular, that are so much more interesting, fallible, and real. Obviously, they're not real, but how strange is it that a puppet can be more real than most computer animation? People are getting better at animating things with flaws, but there's something about something that's handmade that immediately gives it a life and a character that I think surpasses animation.

He denies having a title, but he's just not ready to share:

Do you have a working title for the script?

No.

No? Just Untitled Fairy Tale, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth-like Project?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got a long untitled title. It is exciting. I'm hoping to get that going soon.

The movie will be whimsical, big, and have a theatrical release:

How big should we expect this to be? Will it have a giant theatrical release?

Yeah, I guess so. It'll be a big movie. It's inherently quite big because of the nature of it. There's an epic quality to it. I always love being drawn into another world. What I feel like hasn't been done is that there's a lot of dark fairy tale interpretations being made, but I don't think there's a film that's been made that is playful. It's going to be a comedy fairy tale. You're going to have monsters, but they're going to sing funny songs. That excites me - like a singing dragon doing a funny song.